‘Factory reset before seizure’ is a fact. Spoliation still has to be argued

Cyber Desk · Insight. Series: Digital disputes, as Indian courts actually see them.

‘Factory reset before seizure’ is a fact. Spoliation still has to be argued.

Someone wipes a phone the night before a raid. That wipe is a fact in the timeline. It is not, by itself, a finished legal conclusion. Courts still ask what was on the device, who controlled it, whether a duty to preserve had arisen, and whether the wipe was innocent panic, routine hygiene, or destruction of evidence. Adverse inference is argued from context — not declared from a reset screen alone.

A wiped phone is a fact.

Spoliation is still a case to prove.